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Zero Company cross training explained

Cross Training converts Bond progress into permanent capability. Each time a pair's Bond reaches a new rank you choose one of three joint trainings, drawn at random from a pool of fourteen, and it applies to both Operators. They stack, and they cannot be refunded. The most-argued options are Freeform Training for +2 Focus Points, Timing Exercises for +3% Critical Chance and Fitness Work for +4 Max Health. At rank 8 a Passive Ability unique to the pairing replaces the choice, and from Patch 1.1 the pool it is drawn from includes the passives of both Operators' Secondary Specializations.

Confirmed
Confidence
Confirmed
Verified
16 September 2026
Version
Retail 1.1, 9 September 2026 — official patch notes

Three on offer, drawn from fourteen

Each Bond rank offers three joint trainings, and the one you take applies to both Operators in the pair rather than to one of them. The pool they are drawn from is fourteen, every one of them named in the shipped game: Speed Training (+0.50m first movement), Target Practice (-5% range hit penalty), Agility Drills (-5% enemy ranged hit chance), Close Combat Drills (+1 Melee Damage), Precision Shooting Games (+1 Critical Damage), Timing Exercises (+3% Critical Chance), Freeform Training (+2 Focus Points), Ranged Combat Drills (+1 Ranged Damage), Cover Combat Practice (+5% Cover Bonus), Fitness Work (+4 Max Health), Reflex Fire Training (+1 Overwatch Damage), A Friendly Game (+40 Bond XP), Grenade Training (+1 Grenade Damage) and Combined Fire Games (+1 Assist Damage).

The three you are shown are **drawn at random** from that pool, which is the half of the system that limits planning. You choose between the three — this is a planner, not a slot machine, and that was a real open question here for weeks — but you do not choose which three. A training you are saving for may simply not appear at the rank you wanted it.

What restores the planning is that they stack. The same training can be taken more than once by one pair, so a pairing carried to rank 8 has taken eight of them and three instances of Fitness Work is +12 Max Health on both Operators. Over a full pairing the randomness averages out; over one rank it does not.

The one thing you cannot do is change your mind. A Cross Training is locked in once taken, where a Focus Point can be refunded and respent for nothing from Cycle 3 — so this is the one progression decision in the game that is genuinely permanent, and it is worth treating differently from the Focus Tree beside it.

The options are not equivalent, and two of them are not combat bonuses at all. Freeform Training converts a Bond rank into Focus Points, which buy ability and Talent ranks — so it compounds with everything, where the rest are flat modifiers. A Friendly Game is stranger still: +40 Bond XP buys progress on the very ladder that offered it, more than a completed Tactical Mission's 30, and its value falls the later you take it.

Of the movement and defensive options, Speed Training is the one worth arguing for. Movement comes out of the same three-point pool as attacks, so an Operator who reaches cover in one move instead of two has bought back an Action Point — and on a Rifle Operator, whose second shot costs two AP, that point is the difference between firing twice and not.

Reflex Fire Training is narrower than it looks

+1 Overwatch Damage only pays out on turns an Operator actually holds an Overwatch cone, which most Operators rarely do. It stacks with the Sharpshooter's Pick Them Off, the only class passive that modifies Overwatch, and on that class it is worth taking; almost anywhere else Timing Exercises or Freeform Training will be worth more.

This is the clearest case on the site of a bonus whose value depends entirely on the class it lands on, which is why the Cross Training choice cannot be reduced to a single recommendation.

The rank-8 passive

At rank 8 — Very High — the pair unlocks a special Cross Training granting a Passive Ability rather than one of the three standard options. It is described as the most powerful tier of benefit, it cannot be obtained through the Focus Tree or any other system, and a guide reading the shipped game says it is **unique to each pairing**.

That last part changes what kind of unknown this is. No such passive has been named anywhere, and if each pairing has its own then there is not one missing fact here but one per pair — which makes it, by some distance, the largest hole in this database's coverage of the progression layer. Until a passive is named, treat rank 8 as a known destination with an unknown prize.

The rank pays 7 Focus Points to both Operators on the way past, which is worth saying because it means the last rank is not only about the passive. Even a pairing whose unique passive turns out to be poor has been paid more Focus at rank 8 than at ranks 1 to 5 combined.

Confirmed

The rules as officially stated

  • Cross Training benefits are chosen from three, and the three are drawn at random from the pool.
  • The chosen benefit applies to both Operators in the pair, permanently.
  • Fourteen Cross Trainings are named in the shipped game.
  • Timing Exercises grants +3% Critical Chance in the retail build. A previewer read +5% off a pre-release build.
  • Reflex Fire Training grants +1 Overwatch Damage.
  • Freeform Training grants +2 Focus Points.
  • Fitness Work grants +4 Max Health, Speed Training +0.50m first movement, Ranged Combat Drills +1 Ranged Damage, Grenade Training +1 Grenade Damage, Combined Fire Games +1 Assist Damage, Precision Shooting Games +1 Critical Damage, Close Combat Drills +1 Melee Damage.
  • From Patch 1.1, a Specialization's passive Cross Trainings enter the selection pool at Relationship +8 — including a Secondary Specialization's, which were being excluded. Rank 8 is the one that offers a passive unique to the pairing instead of a standard option, so what a pair can be offered there depends partly on the four Specializations the two Operators carry.
  • Target Practice reduces the range hit penalty by 5%, Agility Drills reduces enemy ranged hit chance by 5%, and Cover Combat Practice raises the Cover Bonus by 5%.
  • A Friendly Game grants +40 Bond XP instead of a statistic.
  • Cross Training bonuses stack, so one pair can take the same training more than once.
  • A Cross Training cannot be refunded, where a Focus Point can.
  • Bonds progress through eight ranks across five named tiers: Very Low, Low, Neutral, High and Very High.
  • Rank 8 unlocks a special Cross Training granting a Passive Ability unique to that pairing.
  • Bonds also teach paired Operators passive abilities and unique tricks, separately from the Cross Training choice.
  • The relationship meter is displayed in the Cross Training menu inside the Personnel facility.
  • Bonds can decay through player actions and story decisions.

Planning

What this means for squad building

  • Plan Bond pairings deliberately. The payoff is permanent and unrefundable, which makes it the one progression decision worth deciding before you are looking at the menu.
  • Freeform Training compounds and the flat modifiers do not — Focus Points buy ranks that scale, where +3% crit and +1 Overwatch damage do not.
  • Only take Reflex Fire Training on an Operator that genuinely holds Overwatch, which in practice means a Sharpshooter running Pick Them Off.
  • Do not plan a specific training. Three of fourteen are drawn at random, so decide an order of preference rather than a target and take the best of what appears.
  • Take A Friendly Game early or not at all. +40 Bond XP is more than half of the 70 that rank 2 costs and a ninth of the 350 that rank 8 costs.
  • Choose a pairing's Secondary Specializations with rank 8 in mind. Their passive Cross Trainings now feed the pool at Relationship +8, so a pair carrying four different classes has a wider top-tier draw than one carrying three.
  • Repeat the training that suits the pair. They stack, so eight ranks on one pairing can be eight instances of the same bonus rather than eight different ones.
  • Speed Training is an Action Point in disguise, and it is worth most to the Operator whose second attack is the expensive one.
  • Grenade Training is the astromech's only offensive Cross Training, and a droid throws nine Utilities a mission.
  • Treat partial Bond progress as valuable. Bonuses arrive at every rank, not only at the last.
  • Bonds decay, so a pairing is a commitment across cycles rather than a one-off.

Open questions

Points the shipped game has not yet answered for us, or that need a controlled comparison to state as fact — recorded rather than guessed at.

  • Every maximum-Bond Passive Ability. None has been named, and a guide reading the shipped game says each pairing's is unique to that pairing — so this is one unknown per pair. Patch 1.1 narrows the question without answering it: the pool draws on the Operators' Specialization passives, including their secondaries, so the pairing is not the only input.
  • Whether fourteen is the whole pool. The source calls its table "all known basic Cross Training rewards", which is a claim about the author rather than about the game.
  • Conflict Resolution, which one guide describes as advancing both Operators toward their next rank. It appears on no other source and on no version of the fourteen-row table, so it is either a fifteenth option or A Friendly Game under another name.
  • Whether the three offered are drawn from the full fourteen or from a subset, and whether a training already taken can appear again. The stacking rule implies it can and nothing states it.
  • Whether Timing Exercises was changed between the preview build and retail, or whether the previewer misread it. Both figures come from someone reading a screen and only one of those screens was the shipped game.
  • How much a Bond decays, and what specifically causes it.

Questions

Common questions

The way these come up in search, answered directly.

Do Bonds actually matter in Zero Company?
Yes — they are the main source of Focus Points, so who you field together shapes your whole progression.
What is Cross Training?
The menu where Bond progress is converted into permanent bonuses that both Operators in the pair receive.

Every question, answered with its sources

Related mechanics

Sources

  • Lead Zero Company To Victory on August 27

    Electronic Arts · Tier 1 — Official · accessed 6 August 2026

    Supports: Operator introductions; 3 Action Points per turn; Advantage caps at 10; the eight Specializations; Bonds in the Personnel Facility; Hawks' species options

  • Star Wars Zero Company: How Some of the Greatest Minds in Tactics Games are Pushing the Genre, Again

    Xbox Wire · Tier 2 — Developer interview · accessed 6 August 2026

    Supports: Greg Foertsch and James Brawley on the eight Specializations, Combat Stim + Gunslinger synergy, Advantage, and Specialization changes on authored characters

  • I played 54 hours of Star Wars Zero Company

    Dantics · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 11 August 2026

    Supports: 5:26–11:55 — an injury is taken only on being reduced to zero health; normal, hard and expert named, plus an Ironman-style toggle; crisis operations; weapon mods slotted freely before missions; a second Specialization after cycle 18; every Bond level granting Focus Points and one of three joint training bonuses; the Sharpshooter's unmissable shot and the Soldier's rocket barrage

  • Complete Star Wars Zero Company Trophy List — How to Get All Achievements & Trophies

    Insider Gaming · Tier 2 — Achievement list · accessed 19 August 2026

    Supports: Full trophy table — Very High Bond as a named relationship threshold, and the named pairings reaching it, including two astromechs and two Custom Operators; completing a mission with four astromechs; equipping four Weapon Mods to one weapon (“Fully Geared”); applying a Focus Point; using Force Push or Pull to knock one enemy into another; knocking an enemy out of the combat space; defeating enemies from higher elevation; landing a shot at 10% or lower Chance-to-Hit and missing at 90% or greater; the difficulty tiers Story, Normal, Hard and Expert, and Expert with Beskar Mode. Published 2026-08-17

  • PC Review — 'Star Wars Zero Company'

    WorthPlaying · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 27 August 2026

    Supports: Weapons — "Regardless of specialization, operators can use any of the game's four ranged weapon types: blaster pistols, blaster rifles, longarms (sniper rifles), and repeaters (machine guns)", and "Blaster pistols deal the least damage but always cost one AP to fire. Blaster rifles cost one AP for the first shot and two for the second, using all three AP an operator starts with each turn. Longarms always cost two AP but offer the longest range." No cost is given for the Repeater. Progression — "Focus points can be completely reset and reallocated at any time, so you're never stuck with a bad build." Bonds — "Reaching a new bond level lets you choose one of three permanent buffs for both operators, including increased health, ranged accuracy, movement range, or additional Focus points." Published 2026-08-26

  • Hands-on report: Star Wars Zero Company

    PlayStation.Blog · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 27 August 2026

    Supports: "I got fired into the fray with the full game ahead of its August 27 launch". Combat abilities listed as examples include "a 100% accurate shot for the sharpshooters" and "a party-wide stats buff", with no cost given for either. Bonds — "Good bonds earn Focus points to enhance an Operative's skills, as well as teaching each other passive abilities and unique tricks", raised by siding with an Operator in a Dilemma, partnering them for assists, completing missions together, or taking character-driven quests. Bylined Corey Brotherson, a contributor rather than PlayStation staff. Published 2026-08-26

  • Star Wars Zero Company Bonds & Cross Training Guide

    Hack the Minotaur · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 16 September 2026

    Supports: Bylined Hack The Minotaur, "Latest Update: September 1, 2026". **The complete Cross Training table, fourteen rows, verbatim**: Speed Training "+0.50m first movement"; Target Practice "-5% range hit penalty"; Agility Drills "-5% enemy ranged hit chance"; Close Combat Drills "+1 Melee Damage"; Precision Shooting Games "+1 Critical Damage"; Timing Exercises "+3% Critical Chance"; Freeform Training "+2 Focus Points"; Ranged Combat Drills "+1 Ranged Damage"; Cover Combat Practice "+5% Cover Bonus"; Fitness Work "+4 Max Health"; Reflex Fire Training "+1 Overwatch Damage"; A Friendly Game "+40 Bond XP"; Grenade Training "+1 Grenade Damage"; Combined Fire Games "+1 Assist Damage". Introduced as "All known basic Cross Training rewards are listed below" — a claim about the author's knowledge, not a claim of completeness. **The eight-rank Bond ladder**, as a table of Rank / Tier / Total Bond XP to Unlock / Focus Points Earned / Cross Training: 1 Very Low 40 1 "1 Standard Upgrade"; 2 Low 70 1; 3 Low 80 1; 4 Neutral 100 1; 5 Neutral 125 1; 6 Neutral 175 2; 7 High 250 4; 8 Very High 350 7 "1 Unique Upgrade". Prose around it: "You also earn Focus Points by hitting each Bond Rank, with 8 Bond Ranks in total", and "There are 8 confirmed Bond Tiers... Very High is the maximum tier and the threshold the game's trophy list recognizes for reaching maximum Bond with a given pair." On the choice: "You get to select from 3 random Cross Training passives each time your Operators rank up in Bond XP. You cannot predict which options will appear at a given tier, only that they will be drawn from the total pool of available trainings." On stacking: "Cross Training STACKS on each Operator. This means you can have multiple instances of Fitness Work (+4 Max Health) or Speed Training (bonus First Movement) for example". On permanence: "Cross Training bonuses apply permanently to both operators in the pair once chosen, regardless of deployment status." On Bond XP: "Each completed mission awards 30 Bond points to every pair that participated"; Call for Backup is "a Free Action available once per turn to one randomly selected operator, at no AP cost", and "Both the operator who called and the operator who assisted gain Bond progress"; healing a specific squadmate builds Bond between those two; assigning two Operators to the same Operation does too. On the top tier: "The maximum-Bond Cross Training grants a Passive Ability unique to each pairing, which cannot be obtained through the Focus Tree or any other progression system." On permadeath: a dead Operator's Bonds are severed and "The Cross Training bonuses already earned and locked in from that pairing remain on the surviving operator." **Checked for and absent**: any Focus Point cost for any node, any figure for Bond decay, and any name for a single maximum-Bond passive. **Re-read 2026-09-16, "Latest Update: September 11, 2026", the table unchanged.** The XP column is headed "Total Bond XP to Unlock" and nothing in the prose says whether that total is per rank or running; the one sentence near it is "Unlocking each rank requires more Bond XP each time, so while your Operators will gain Ranks 1-5 quickly, anything beyond that will take significant investment to earn." This site read the column as cumulative from 2026-09-08. A reader playing the retail build reported on 2026-09-13 that each rank's figure is paid on top of the last, which the table supports — read cumulatively, rank 3 would sit 10 XP above rank 2 against a 30 XP mission award, and "more each time" would be false at that step. Filed as the per-rank reading from 2026-09-16; the full ladder sums to 1,190. **Checked for and absent** on the re-read: any statement of the ladder's total.

  • Star Wars Zero Company: How to Increase Bond Levels

    allthings.how · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 8 September 2026

    Supports: Bylined Pallav Pathak, updated 28 August 2026. Names three Cross Trainings this database already held — "Timing Exercises: +5% Critical Chance", "Reflex Fire Training: +1 Overwatch Damage", "Freeform Training: +2 Focus Points" — and two it did not: "Ranged Combat Drills (+1 Ranged Damage)" and "Fitness Work (+4 Max Health)", plus Conflict Resolution, which it describes as pushing "the pair toward their next bond level" rather than granting a stat. **Its Timing Exercises figure is the pre-release +5%**, where `retail-htm-bonds` reads +3% off the shipped card; see that record. On permanence, verbatim: training rewards are "locked in once taken, unlike Focus Points, which you can refund and respend." On the menu: "The training options are drawn at random for each playthrough, so no two campaigns present them in the same order." On the top tier: "Reaching the maximum bond unlocks a special Cross Training that grants a Passive Ability, the strongest tier of reward." **Conflict Resolution appears on no other source read in this pass**, including the fourteen-row table on `retail-htm-bonds`, which is why it is entered with that absence stated rather than as a fifteenth row of the same standing.

  • STAR WARS Zero Company — Patch 1.1 Notes

    Electronic Arts · Tier 1 — Official · accessed 14 September 2026

    Supports: Published 9 September 2026, the first post-launch patch; re-read in full on 14 September 2026, when it was still the newest entry on EA's News & Updates page. **Every item below is listed by EA under bug fixes**, which is what makes each one a statement about 1.0 as well as about 1.1. Secondary Specializations: their passive Cross Trainings "now correctly enter the selection pool at Relationship +8", and Secondary Specializations "now count for Specialization-specific Operation requirements and results". Chance-to-Hit: attacks displayed at 100% "can no longer erroneously miss". Scattergun: Tiers II, III and IV "no longer incorrectly use Tier I values". Droid Dismantler: Harmony "is granted only on Droid deaths, not on every enemy death". Tel-Rea: the Ranged Damage Cross Training bonus "is now applied once rather than twice" to her Force attacks, and Critical Damage bonuses "now correctly apply" to them. DC-17m Anti-Armor: it "can now critically hit" and "receives damage bonuses that apply to grenades". Ion Blasters "no longer double Critical Damage". Sweeping Salvo: "enemies outside the targeting cone are no longer hit". A Life of Labor II "can no longer infinitely accumulate bonuses when purchased repeatedly". Immovable: the status "now provides its intended bonuses". Bacta Tank, missed on the first read and added 14 September: "Fixed an issue where the Bacta Tank could be used more than one in a cycle" — EA's wording, typo included; the intended rule is one use per cycle. Overwatch, three lines, quoted verbatim on 14 September because the first pass had paraphrased the first of them too loosely: "Fixed an issue where Overwatch shots triggered against attackers caused the enemies to fire through solid objects at Operators they couldn't see" — an enemy-side line-of-sight failure, not the player's reaction shots passing through walls; "Fixed some instances of Overwatch triggering on a unit outside of the targeting cone"; and "Fixed various Overwatch issues that caused enemies and Operators to be unintentionally attacked". A fourth mentions it in passing: "Fixed a turn ordering issue that caused the Coil Captain to heal a target already slain by Overwatch". **Checked for and absent**: any figure for anything — no Scattergun tier statistics, no Harmony amount, no DC-17m damage, no figure for what Immovable now provides, no Bacta Tank cost. Also absent: any fix for Overwatch *failing* to trigger. Every Overwatch line corrects a shot that should not have happened, and none claims a shot that should have happened now does.